tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post116191491994694666..comments2014-12-12T05:29:46.343-05:00Comments on Debunking Christianity: Non-Exclusivism, Universalism, Evil, and, Philosophy As One Big "IF"Dr. Hector Avaloshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10840869326406664177noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1162247472091804622006-10-30T17:31:00.000-05:002006-10-30T17:31:00.000-05:00Dear ochristian,Thanks for your questions:1) Natur...Dear ochristian,<BR/>Thanks for your questions:<BR/><BR/>1) Nature kills and causes suffering, and has done so long before humanity ever appeared on the scene, so I do not know what humanity has had to do with the past hundreds of millions of years of death and suffering. <BR/><BR/>And till the inventions of plumbing and antibiotics, humanity (especially children) was the prey to diseases, not to mention still being prey to natural diseases and disasters. Diseases also continue to kill far more people than wars between human beings each year. <BR/><BR/>As for the possibility of humanity destroying itself (and/or taking down countless non-human species as well) via reckless reproduction, and pollution of the planet, yes that's also a possibility. We may be too ingenious at spreading ourselves as a species too quickly, having reached the stage of heated homes, cooled homes, plumbing, antibiotics, industries, and pollution. But I don't interpret the Bible as having forseen such a debacle, since the plagues of God in Rev. are depicted as being sent by God, supernaturally. (I definitely disagree with pre-mil interpretations of Rev. or attempts to deny that Rev. depicts the world at the time of "Jesus's return" as being one in which people still drive chariots and still own slaves. Every book in the Bible of course takes the existence of slavery for granted from Genesis to Revelation. But Revelation 6:15; 13:16 & 19:18 take for granted the existence of “free men” and “slaves” (verse 18:13 even takes for granted the existence of both “slaves” and “chariots,” which is odd for a book some believe to be a “vision of the future”). <BR/><BR/>I also doubt that the historical Jesus ever dreamed of forming a church. According to the Gospels, the man from Nazareth virtually never used the word “church.” <BR/><BR/>There are no sayings of Jesus spoken in public that programmatically call for a community of the elect and for the founding of a church. Biblical critics are agreed on this point: Jesus did not proclaim a church, nor did he proclaim himself, but the kingdom of God. Governed by the awareness of living in an end time, Jesus wanted to announce God’s imminent kingdom. [Hans Kung, The Catholic Church: A Short History] <BR/><BR/>The whole of Jesus’s work implied that the apocalypse was imminent; some of his sayings were quite explicit on the point… The prima facie view of the Jesus mission was that it was an immediate prelude to a Last Judgment. Hence the urgency of the pentecostal task, an urgency which Paul shared throughout his life [“...brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly...” 2 Thes 3:1], so that his final hope was to carry the good news, while there was still time, to Spain - - for him, “the ends of the earth.”<BR/>[Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1979), p.38.]<BR/><BR/>See also my online article, "The Lowdown on God's Showdown." <BR/><BR/>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR/><BR/>2) Your second point about how you cannot tell one thing without the other, for instance <BR/><BR/>Negative--->Positive <BR/><BR/>is similar to the point I made in my article. But note that the point I am making is the failure of philosophical explanations in general, how they make abstractions from reality and assume that only one-sided abstractions existed in the beginning, and then face the problem of getting from one abstract to its opposite.Edward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403201012681262598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1162074852572569232006-10-28T18:34:00.000-04:002006-10-28T18:34:00.000-04:00Sorry for addressing your comment first and not yo...Sorry for addressing your comment first and not your post but I would like to say one thing concerning:<BR/><BR/>Perfect Cold---->Hotness<BR/><BR/>Perfect Darkness---->Luminosity<BR/><BR/>Couldn't you just as easily say:<BR/><BR/>Negative----->Positive ?<BR/><BR/>It doesn't really make sense, does it?<BR/><BR/>Cold is the absence of heat, darkness is the absence of light. Without the positive can one even be aware of the negative? Only with at least some heat, or some light can one perceive it's absence. The total lack of the positive (the total negative) would have to be....nothingness.ochristianhttp://rev22.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1162072510168406762006-10-28T17:55:00.000-04:002006-10-28T17:55:00.000-04:00Mr. Babinski,When you set down your list of all th...Mr. Babinski,<BR/><BR/>When you set down your list of all the problems that mankind has to suffer through, from problems associated with physical deformities to viral and bacterial infections to vitamin and mineral deficiencies....well couldn't they also be explaind as the result of mankind living out of step with the natural order that God has established? <BR/><BR/>Much of these problems can be associated with poverty, overpopulation, wholesale land encroachment, environmental abuse, poor nutritional choices and non-active lifestyles. Perhaps if mankind could do a better job of living in harmony with this earth and what has been abundantly available rather than follow the pursuits of avarice and competition....ochristianhttp://rev22.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1161988553652219652006-10-27T18:35:00.000-04:002006-10-27T18:35:00.000-04:00[NONE of the comments below were written by Edward...[NONE of the comments below were written by Edward T. Babinski]<BR/><BR/>darkone67 writes...<BR/><BR/>I suppose I have never been concerned enough about the origin of the world... I find it interesting and have speculated, of course, but it has never offended me not to know. There are a few questions I don't need to answer now... I figure someday I'll know--or I won't, and it may not matter either way.<BR/><BR/>Those who follow their religion and believe whole-heartedly that creationism is the absolute answer boggle my mind as much as anyone else who suggests a theory with any authoritative certainty.<BR/><BR/>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR/><BR/>Daver writes...<BR/><BR/>i have been going through a rather large psychological and philosophical change the past few years. in the end i say take faith/hope put it in one hand, and cr*p in the other and see what you got. seeing is believing in the end. <BR/><BR/>~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR/><BR/>David Windhorst (not to be confused with Daver, above) writes...<BR/><BR/>Speaking from the perspective of a guy who's looking at getting some titanium replacement parts for his spine as soon as the FDA will allow, if there's an intelligence responsible for designing me, I want the number for its tech support line.<BR/><BR/>~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR/><BR/>[NONE of the above emails were written by Edward T. Babinski.]Edward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403201012681262598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1161980400310479052006-10-27T16:20:00.000-04:002006-10-27T16:20:00.000-04:00Victor Reppert said... Ed, The whole defensive ope...Victor Reppert said... <BR/><BR/>Ed, The whole defensive operation against the argument from evil is an attempt to who the limits of a philosophical argument and the difficulty it faces in proving the nonexistence of God. Whenever the people you don't like are making arguments, you love to point out our cognitive limitations. When we try to do it to the argument from evil, you object. <BR/><BR/>Atheists are attempting to prove that God does not exist using the argument from evil. So which is it Ed? Can atheists prove that the tri-omni God does not exist, or not? Does the argument from evil, a philosophical argument if there ever was one, really prove that God does not exist? If it does, then you must maintain that philosophy is not just one big IF, and that it really can prove a significant philosophical result. If, on the other hand, you maintain that the argument doesn't prove the non-existence of God, then you agree with me about the argument from evil. There's no middle ground Ed. It's yes or no. <BR/>8:29 AM <BR/><BR/>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR/> <BR/>Edward T. Babinski REPLIED...<BR/> <BR/>Vic,<BR/>There is no need to choose sides, not if you are arguing in strictly philosophical terms. You can argue all you want in multiple philosophical terms and from all angles, because it's a game. Even physicists who can't see into the depth of matter-energy entertain multiple hypotheses at the same time. (But to Christian philosophers it's one's "eternal destiny" what you choose to believe.) <BR/><BR/>You make it sound like I've been coy in asserting that philosophy "proves" nothing. I have explained that philosophy appears like a way to exercise one's mind, and a way to weed out the most egregious rational incoherencies (though plenty of rival coherent systems continue to exist), and a way to recognize the questions inherent in every assumption, demonstrating that assumptions prove nothing yet everthing in philosophy rests on them. <BR/><BR/>But given the limitations of human knowledge, and the sparseness of evidence of things we all can see and touch concerning God and the afterlife, coupled with the ingenuity-imagination of philosophical ways of arguing, it appears impossible to "prove" things about reality, about the BIG questions, simply via "philosophizing" about them. <BR/><BR/>A God or gods might exist, but it does not appear to me that philosophical arguments are going to prove it, nor are they going to prove much about the God or demi-god or infinite panentheistic, pantheistic deity behind it all or in it all or emerging and evolving with it all.<BR/><BR/>SECONDLY, concerning the massive amount of common knowledge of things seen and touched in the visible cosmos, concering THAT cosmos that we ALL experience and live in--there is both good and evil and grey areas inbetween, there is both light and darkness and greyness, pain and pleasure and things inbetween, suffering and joy and things inbetween, but in the end the individual living things in that cosmos die. That happens to be a depressing fact if you are an individual living thing in this cosmos, and know consciously you are going to die, and have to live with that knowledge, as well as the sight of suffering and death of others, and the knowledge that living things have been dying ever since living things first arose, and long before human beings even arose on the scene.<BR/><BR/>Two hundred years ago the French naturalist, Buffon, lamented, “Half the children born never reach the age of eight.” They died of diseases like smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, the flu, pneumonia, cholera, tuberculosis, meningitis, chicken pox, tetanus and staphylococcus infections. In fact a high percentage of the young of all animals and plants die from bacterial or viral infections. In terms of the theory of evolution it simply means that for eons the young of all species have been “fast-food” for certain strains of bacteria and viruses whose ancestors were on this planet living off the bounty of single-celled creatures for a billion years before multi-cellular forms of life even began to evolve. Bacteria and viruses have been co-evolving and adapting along with their hosts, and so have maintained their complex ability to pry open the lid on animal and plant cells and eat what’s inside the can, even though the animals and plants have evolved complex immune system defenses that succeed in protecting them to various extents. It’s an escalating battle of course, such that the MHC genes, that produce the surface proteins on all our cells that control immunological recognition, show an immense amount of allelic variation. Subsequently, there are thousands upon thousands of different immune types. Meanwhile, bacteria and viruses keep their own surface proteins mutating at a higher rate than our immune system can naturally respond to them. Hence, the evolution of complex immune system defenses in multi-cellular creatures, and the evolution of complex mutating engines and attack systems in bacteria and viruses. Talk about an “arms race!” In the end, nothing is as disrespectful of higher life forms as the tiny microbes that hungrily devour the children of all species.<BR/><BR/>Seventy percent of us suffer lower back pain, because our vertebrae are better designed to function as horizontal suspension bridges for our internal organs rather than as vertical supports for a bipedal mammal. Other marvels of design include flat feet, weak ankles and knees, varicose veins, heart failure, dangerously thin portions of the skull, teeth that are impacted (or crooked and badly crowded), hernias, hemorrhoids, allergic reactions, eye problems, appendicitis, gall bladder disease, prostate problems, “female problems,” danger of choking (because our breathing passage, eating passage, and speech box are all right on top of each other). Not to mention the pain and mortal dangers that childbirth holds for women, and birth defects both major and minor. (Regardless of whether you believe that Jesus “loves all the little zygotes in the world,” apparently that love does not include giving them all a whole and healthy start in life.)<BR/><BR/>Most creatures on earth do not obtain all the vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and protein they need to grow up into the best possible shape, physically and mentally. “Some 2 billion people in the world suffer vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can limit intellectual development, impair the immune system, cause birth defects, and hinder local economic growth.” [Jennifer Kahn, “We RNA What We Eat,” Discover, Vol. 26, no. 10, Oct. 2005] That’s about a third of the planet, and some think the number is nearer to one half than one third. <BR/><BR/>Lack of vitamin A causes blindness in children, night blindness in adults, a weakened immune system, and hinders embryological development; lack of vitamin C causes scurvy, lack of niacin causes pellagra; lack of vitamins C, E, B-6, B-12 and/or iron, causes anemia; lack of vitamin B-12 is linked to fibro-cystic breast condition; lack of Folic Acid causes birth defects, and heart disease in adults; lack of vitamin D causes rickets, increased risk of colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, and prostate cancer; lack of iron causes low I.Q., fatigue, anemia; lack of iodine causes blindness, mental impairment, goiter; lack of other minerals like calcium or even lack of certain trace elements can cause the body to run inefficiently or cause deficiency diseases, as does the lack of necessary quantities of protein in the diet.<BR/><BR/>Such deficiencies are especially hard on babies and children where a deficiency’s effects are magnified and lead to lifelong physical and mental problems. As many as 30% of the children in China (a country with the world’s highest population) are believed to suffer stunted growth (and sexual maturation problems) due to zinc deficiency. And there is a “goiter belt” along the Atlantic coast from west to central Africa, where many people lack enough iodine in their system. The worst area for this deficiency is in the Republic of Guinea where 70% of all adults have goiter. “Thyroid swelling was sometimes present at birth and affected 55% of school children...Endemic cretinism… was found in about 2% of goitrous patients...other children, especially those affected by the most severe neurological symptoms, suffer early and high mortality rates.” (“Goitrous Endemic in Guinea,” The Lancet, Dec. 17, 1994)<BR/><BR/>Microgram for microgram, the poisons produced by some bacteria in our food are more potent than all other known poisons on earth. One tenth of an ounce of the toxin produced by bacteria causing botulism would be more than enough to kill everyone in the city of New York; and a 13-ounce glassful would be enough to kill all 6 billion human beings on Earth. (The same goes for the toxin that causes tetanus.) Is that God’s handiwork? Creationists must imagine God working overtime in His own personal biological warfare laboratory.Edward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403201012681262598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1161974368996745752006-10-27T14:39:00.000-04:002006-10-27T14:39:00.000-04:00Steve,Thanks for the questions. I was simply ASSUM...Steve,<BR/>Thanks for the questions. I was simply ASSUMING what some Christian and theistic philosophers assume, namely, that "libertarian freewill exists." <BR/><BR/>The definition of "libertarian freewill" is that given all the same circumstances, a person or God, could make a choice completely different from the one previously made. <BR/><BR/>Personally I have just as much difficulty as you do trying to imagine a choice not determined by both the totality of a person's knowledge and experience in life up to that point, or determined by effects and influences so subtle and unconscious as to be unacknowledged. Furthermore, if "choices" are not determined by anything except "freedom" then they are absurd, like a wheel of fortune. <BR/><BR/>So I agree with you, good questions! But then philosophy is filled with "IFs" not answers concerning the BIG questions.<BR/><BR/>And of course the study of how the brain/mind functions is increasingly constrained by scientific advances in the study of how human beings make decisions. But there is no such constraint on all the imaginative recipies that attempt to "answer" the problem of a good God and evil, suffering, death and ignorance in the cosmos. It's especially amusing that brain/mind studies are going to continue for a long time, but theistic philosophers already claim they have "answers" concerning things like "God," His "freewill," how his mind worked and why He created the cosmos where everything dies, etc. <BR/><BR/>One might add the question of what is to become of all those being "less than God" who get to spend "eternity" in heaven? If they still have "freewill," and if they are "less than God," then what can keep them from ever freely choosing hell again? That just goes to prove that even theists have to agree with me that being "less than God" does not mean "less good." <BR/><BR/>EdEdward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403201012681262598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1161916252539354612006-10-26T22:30:00.000-04:002006-10-26T22:30:00.000-04:00Ed,I'm new to your blog. But I'll be brash and pos...Ed,<BR/><BR/>I'm new to your blog. But I'll be brash and post a comment anyway.<BR/><BR/>I don't think free will is anything but an illusion of the human mind. <BR/><BR/>I don't think freedom of will is even possible in any sensible way. If there was an omni-max deity (god), even it would not be able to have a free will. <BR/><BR/>You say "if freewill was truly free" over and over again. Well what would freewill not being true at all do to your thoughts?<BR/><BR/>SteveStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439415980531186701noreply@blogger.com